Sabrien Amrov

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Sabrien Amrov is pursuing her Ph.D. in Human Geography at the University of Toronto. In 2013, she earned her master’s degree in International Relations, with Honours, from the University of Ottawa. Her MA thesis on the Security Sector Reform in the West Bank was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2011, she earned her Honours Bachelors in Conflict Studies and Human Rights with a Minor in Arabic Language and Culture from the same university. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Middle East Monitor, Rabble and TRT World.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s top leadership body, the Central Council, called for a halt to Palestinian security coordination with Israel in 2015. Yet PLO Chair Mahmoud Abbas has described it as sacred despite the breakdown of the peace process to end Israel’s 50-year military occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory. The killing by Israeli forces of activist and youth leader Basil Al-Araj, whom the Palestinian Authority had previously imprisoned – raising accusations that his jailing was part of its so-called revolving door policy - has refocused public attention on the issue. In the selection of pieces below, Al-Shabaka policy analysts discuss the origins and pillars of Israeli-PA security coordination as well as its consequences for the Palestinian people, who experience it as an additional layer of oppression to the multiple violations of their rights under occupation, within Israel, and in exile.

The Palestinian Authority’s security sector has grown faster than any other part of the government, potentially putting Palestine on track to a police state. With the unity government moving into Gaza after Israel’s terrible 51-day assault, Al-Shabaka Policy Member Sabrien Amrov and Program Director Alaa Tartir call for the urgent need to reform the donor-driven “reform” of a sector that only serves Israel’s colonization project. Read the policy brief or the executive summary.